Little Boxes
by Seer of Spots
Summary: oneshot, RLNT. He liked Mr Lupin. He liked the way he could talk about things that didn’t matter, yet make them all the world. But he didn't like Christmas. Awards: Best Angst, Joint 1st Community Choice, Outstanding Contribution and Outstanding Newcomer.


**Little Boxes**  
by Heaven's Flying Fish

o:o:o

**Summary:** [one shot, RLNT. A hoarse voice split the cold Christmas month in a black, lonely wood. He liked Mr Lupin. He liked the way he could talk about things that didn't matter, yet make them all the world. But he didn't like Christmas.

**A/N: **Written for LJ community MetamorphicMoon's Winter Wonderland Advent Challenge. My prompts were _Advent calendar_ and _"I have had to fight, almost every night/ Down through these centuries./ That is when I say, oh yes yet again,/ ...Wish I could be dancing now/ In the arms of the girl I love." – Stop the Cavalry_, Jona Lewie.

**NEWS: **This fic has picked up four awards over at the community: Joint 1st Place Community Choice (with Gilpin25's _The Glass Slipper_, which is Utterly Hilarious), Winner: Angst, Outstanding Newcomer and Outstanding Contribution. Thanks to the mods and the Community Choice voters, and congratulations to all of the other award-winners!

o:o:o

"Mr Lupin?"

Remus stopped dragging his stick in the dirt and squinted into the shadows of the forest. It was dark, very dark. Shadows made shadows with each other until the landscape was a void of blacks receding into blacker blacks. From the deepest shadows a pair of small eyes glinted.

Remus patted the space of log beside him, before realising that the boy probably couldn't see him doing so. Remus cleared his throat, and spoke as gently as his rough voice allowed. "Come take a seat," he offered.

There was a sudden moment of utter darkness when the two glinting eyes shut with a blink, before they opened again. Kicking his feet through the leaves and dead things at his ankles, the small boy came closer.

He passed through a wide shaft of grey light, which illuminated him in a flash, before he was immersed in darkness once again. Highlights fell on the child's unkempt hair, his protruding cheek bones and slightly darty eyes. They flashed over his clenching-and-unclenching fists which nervously cracked their knuckles as he advanced. They threw into dull relief the sunken cavity under his ribcage, over which was stretched a too-small rag of a shirt.

Remus assembled his face into one of calm, one of contentment, as the boy came to his side. Instead, however, of sitting on the log, he folded himself into a cube at Remus's feet. He laid the side of his head on the knees brought up to his chest, and looked at the ground.

"How are you today?" Remus asked, his voice light and unconcerned, as he peered down at the mop of sandy hair by his knee. (Was it sandy? Was it grey? Was it red or blonde or brown? It was - always - too dark to tell.)

The boy shrugged, bony shoulders engulfing his ears.

"How is anyone, today or otherwise?" he mumbled, shredding a mulchy leaf between his spindly fingers.

Remus considered him for a moment, before dropping down to the ground and leaning his back against his log. "Hungry," he said, eventually, and Christopher chuckled. Or sniffed.

It was hard to tell.

The boy looked up, and stared Remus long and hard in the face. "What were you drawing, Mr Lupin?" he asked after a stagnant pause.

"Ah," said Remus, settling in for some lecturing. "This here, you see, is an advent calendar."

Christopher didn't say anything – didn't like to admit his ignorance, his embarrassment – but continued to look at Remus.

Remus's mouth stretched to the side in a slight smile, his tired eyes crinkling the creases at their borders. "An advent calendar is what one keeps in the time leading up to Christmas."

At the word Christmas, the boy beside him flinched a little and retreated a little into himself. His face was still turned towards Remus – he wanted to learn, he wanted to hear someone speak of something other than _domination_ and _rights_ and _blood_ and _guilt_ and _duty_. He liked Mr Lupin. He liked the way he could talk about things that didn't matter, yet make them all the world. He liked the way Mr Lupin made him believe that _duty_ and _guilt_ and _blood_ and _rights_ and _domination_ could be as inconsequential to some people as silly calendars seemed to him.

But he didn't like Christmas. Or birthdays. Or weddings. Or any sort of celebration.

Or full moons.

But Christmas was especially bad.

Christopher's eyes unglazed and Remus began to speak again. "See here?" he said, pointing at the first little box. "That was the first of December. And see here ..." he said, pointing at a little box in the next line, "that there is today, the ninth of December. You cross all the little boxes out" – he did so, up to nine – "until the twenty-fifth, which is Christmas."

Christopher chuckled darkly. Remus cast him a sidelong glance. It was odd to _hear_ something as black as their surroundings, and odder still to hear it coming from the heart of such a small, frail boy.

"I often forget how short a time you've been here, Mr Lupin," Christopher started. He stopped, and stared into the forest for a long moment. Remus waited patiently for him to continue. "You weren't here last year, or the year before. _You_ haven't been here every day of your life …" he stopped again. He wasn't used to _talking_ so much. "Christmas here isn't like what it's like everywhere else. Christmas … Christm –" Christopher's eyes welled and he buried his face into his body. A muffled whisper, "Only Mr Greyback gets _presents_ on Christmas, Mr Lupin," as if it explained it all.

And it did.

Remus's jaw tightened, and in his mind he saw flashes, bloody flashes, of Christmas day, bloody flashes of park swings - empty - bloody, gory flashes of _gifts_ and _duty_ and _domination_.

Remus closed his eyes.

Remus breathed.

Remus opened his eyes.

"Christopher, like you said, Christmas here isn't like what it's like everywhere else. Back home - "

"You aren't _at_ home, Mr Lupin," Christopher said, tightly, before he deconstructed his little human cube and stalked, tainted, back into the darkness.

"I know," whispered Remus, and he sat until the first spark of paleness set fire to the forest, staring down Christopher's path and thinking of home.

o:o:o

Remus was on his log again. He picked up a twig and began to cross off the days.

"_On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …_" and he stopped. Because it was the first day of Christmas, but there was no partridge, no pear tree. "And no true love," Remus finished, scratching out the number '12' a little harsher than he first intended.

"Hello, Mr Lupin," Christopher said, suddenly behind, beside, and at the feet of, Remus in rapid succession. While Remus was still reeling from his sudden appearance, Christopher took the time to observe what Mr Lupin had been up to.

"Oh, that ridiculous calendar, again," he scoffed, folding himself up again, and settling against the log. Remus dropped down beside him.

"Would you like me to tell you a story?" Remus asked.

Christopher laughed harshly. "How old do you think I am, Mr Lupin?"

"I think you are old enough to know too much, and to appreciate a bit of light conversation, Christopher." Remus raised one eyebrow, in a challenge that the twelve year old struggled to meet.

After long moments of silence, Christopher turned his head and yellow eyes clashed no more. He nodded.

Remus leaned firmly into his log, settling his hands in his lap and leaning his head back against the black-dark moss, and closing his eyes.

A cool breeze tickled his fringe and the blackness behind his eyelids, the blackness he knew pressed in on all sides, for once did not make him uneasy.

Relaxed, Remus silently thanked the thick canopy of trees above for stopping the snow from reaching the forest floor.

And then he _remembered_.

Allowing himself to get lost amongst the memories, allowing himself to weave the tale of ages, the tale of the Marauders, of Lily, of Harry, of Christmases past, Remus remembered.

He recalled snowball fights and failed potions and incapacitating feasts and good cheer. He relived fire-side conversations and dorm-room discussions.

Christopher watched, rapt, as Remus, eyes shut, remembered and recalled. Christopher watched Mr Lupin's face change from calm and collected to something young, to something bright.

But, all good stories come to an end, and, despite being a werewolf, even Christopher knew the tale of Harry Potter.

He was mildly surprised to discover that reclusive, scholarly _werewolf_ Mr Lupin was so close in relation to Greyback's commander's enemy, but he was not _very_ surprised.

Dawn returned to them slowly, and Remus returned to himself with the clearer shade of grey that marked morning.

The two sat in silence for a few more hours, thinking.

There was nothing more to say.

"How old do you think you are?" Remus asked Christopher.

Christopher stared at Remus's face. His eyes drifted to the side and focused on something Remus could not see. His eyes focused on something which he could not see, either.

"Far too old for stories," he said, eventually. He stood up. Looking unsettled, Christopher walked through Remus's advent calendar and headed deeper into the forest.

Remus sighed, and picked up his twig.

He began to trace out little boxes.

o:o:o

The company of werewolves moved on before the twenty-fifth of December, so Remus gathered his meagre belongings and left his log, his twig and his calendar behind.

As they moved camps, Christopher kept as close to Remus as he could, as subtly as he could. He didn't want Mr Lupin to know how much he thought about his stories, about his laugh, about his friends.

But Mr Lupin knew he was there, Mr Lupin kept watch over him.

o:o:o

"Do you want to cross it out, Christopher?" Mr Lupin asked, offering him the new Advent Twig.

Christopher didn't scoff, but nor did he stare into silence for minutes. His hand trembled slightly as it hesitantly reached out for the stick; his other hand cracked its knuckles nervously in his threadbare pocket.

This forest wasn't as thick, wasn't as dark, but Greyback still managed to pick a place where the lightest it got was grey. Due to the sparser coverage, half a foot or so of snow had built up into a grey mass, stained brown-grey and green-grey by the undergrowth.

Christopher leaned over, his knees sticking awkwardly out of his boy-prism as he put two shaky-but-neat lines through '23'.

"Tell me a story," he said. "Tell me a story about a girl."

Remus raised his eyebrows and his cheeks twitched. "A girl?"

Christopher's bloodless face slowly gained colour as he flushed. "Or a boy, I s'pose."

"No, no," Remus said, sweeping the smile from his face and the amusement from his eyes, "a girl is fine. Any sort of girl?"

"A little one. A bright one. With … colours."

Remus swallowed. A little one … a little bright girl … with colours …

He didn't want – he didn't want to think about that girl – any girl, he corrected his thoughts.

Christopher's face deepened in colour even further as Remus's paled slightly.

Mr Lupin, for once, was the one with the averted gaze, the one with the shaking hands and the clenching teeth and hands and toes.

"'S stupid, forgeddit," Christopher mumbled, scrambling to his feet.

"Her name," Remus said, his voice hoarser, harsher, and yet more gentle than Christopher had ever heard it, was quiet, but trumpeted over the boy's flailing limbs effortlessly.

"Wh-what?" Christopher stuttered, confused.

Mr Lupin still wasn't looking at him, and it was this, perhaps, that prompted Christopher to fall back into the snow and stare at him as if he had never seen the man before.

Quieter still, Remus repeated, "Her name …"

The two words were like a permanent sticking charm. Christopher glued his sight on Mr Lupin and watched the small changes in his face.

A muscle in his jaw tensed, released, tensed, released.

His nostrils flared slightly, in, out, in, out, as he breathed.

"… is Nymphadora Tonks," he finished. Lost in his own world of _something_, Mr Lupin began to tell her story. "She is the kindest, most forgiving, brightest girl in the whole, wide, open world."

His Adam's apple bobbed. Up. Down. And again.

"She has colours. She is colours. All pinks and purples and oranges and greens. All at once or one at a time. She doesn't match at all, but she's perfect and fitting, and too, too good."

His eyes closed. They didn't open again.

His eyebrows, they drew together as he tried to get every perfect, fitting, mismatched detail about this girl down correctly.

"She's wild. She's down to earth. She's tough, but so very fragile. So breakable."

His long-fingered hands came up and gripped into his hair, as if to_wrench_ the memory, perfect and whole, from his mind.

"Last Christmas, she, her cousin and I all stayed together. We told her stories," Mr Lupin looked briefly at Christopher, before staring blankly into the distance. "We told her our stories," he repeated, "and she told us hers."

Mr Lupin breathed in hard and long, holding it for as long as his lungs could stand, before releasing it in a cloudy rush which dissipated too quickly.

"I can't expl – I – no one can do her justice," Mr Lupin finished.

And, although it wasn't much of a story, and although Christopher didn't find out any of her stories, any of their stories, or why no one could do her justice, his mind and heart were full. Full of this girl who so captured Mr Lupin's attention as to draw him from the present even more wholly than his dead companions.

Christopher blinked.

Remus turned his head to look at Christopher.

"We _danced_," Remus said, and there was so much joy, so much _longing_, so many secrets, so many tears in his eyes and throat and voice that Christopher felt intrusive.

He wasn't too _old_ for stories, he realised, he was far too young.

"Nymphadora Tonks," Christopher tried. He thought it, then shaped it in his mouth with his tongue, then said it again. "_Nymphadora Tonks_."

Remus and Christopher sat in silence, cold and wet from snow.

Then sunrise came and the snow turned pink-grey, and Remus turned pink-grey, and Christopher's first smile turned pink-grey, and together they crossed off the 24 and welcomed the 25th day of December.

"Happy Christmas, Nymphadora Tonks," Christopher whispered, staring unfocusedly into the distance at something which, for once, he could see.

And the next year, and all the years afterwards, when Mr Lupin was gone at Christmastime, Christopher stared into the blackness of the woods he was in, stared out from his awkward little boy-cube, and saw Mr Lupin and _Nymphadora Tonks_ dancing for ever and ever and ever as he crossed out his shaky little boxes.

And he remembered.

o:o:o

Happy belated Christmas, everyone.

o:o:o


End file.
